On the cover of "Trouble in Shangri-La," Nicks is wearing something fluttery and flappy; her feet, in those platform boots, seem to barely touch the ground. Photographed from behind, she looks like she's about to fly off a castle balcony over the moonlit ocean. What's the matter -- all your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind? Back in Fleetwood Mac's day, they called Stevie a witch and snickered at her and feared her whirly-girly, hit-making, mystical female powers. But wouldn't you know it, witches are cool now, too: Willow and Tara from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the sisters on "Charmed," Tabitha on the soap "Passions." Stevie Nicks was, of course, ahead of her time.

You can see why empowered females like McLachlan and Crow are lining up to pay their respect. There has always been a warm sisterliness about Nicks' music. OK, sometimes you don't know what the heck she's talking about, but she has never penned an unkind word about another woman. Nicks is a girl's girl. She always has a posse of female friends around her; female fans used to perm their hair and wear flowing shmattes in her honor. She was unselfconscious enough to write a love song called "Sara," and let people wonder.

When "Sara" came out on Fleetwood Mac's dense 1979 "Tusk" album, there was a theory going around that the song was about Bob Dylan's ex-wife, sung from Dylan's perspective. And though that theory has been debunked by Nicks herself, it remains a tantalizing possibility. Isn't it obvious that Nicks is a Dylan-head, always has been? Listen to her phrasing, her verbose, opaque, myth- and legend-referencing lyrics. Of course, nobody knows what Dylan's talking about sometimes, either, but nobody ever called him an airhead.

But I digress. The women in Nicks' songs are free birds and gypsies, in tune with the moon and the sea, independent, unafraid to be alone, uncaged. In the manly world of rock 'n' roll, Nicks articulated a yearning female spirituality. She put her womanliness right out there, undiluted. She was Lilith Fair before there was Lilith Fair.

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Today, at 53, Stevie Nicks is still twirling. Her voice is deeper and slightly more nasal -- a byproduct, maybe, of the gigantic hole in her nose that resulted from her long coke habit (well documented on a particularly juicy episode of VH1's "Behind the Music"). But the new maturity in Nicks' timbre gives her "Trouble in Shangri-La" duets with Crow, Maines and Gray a more fascinating texture. All of those women have a bit of Nicks in them -- Crow has her husky-throated introspection, Maines her sugary toughness, Gray her slinky eccentricity. So when they take turns singing with Nicks, it's as if you're hearing her past and present selves meeting up to ponder what was, what is and what might have been.

Indeed, one song on "Trouble in Shangri-La," "Planets of the Universe," was written in 1976 while Nicks was breaking up with Buckingham. You can hear echoes of "Silver Springs" in the chorus' fierce prediction: "You will never love again/The way you loved me." She's still worrying that knot, and so apparently is Buckingham, who plays guitar on the track "I Miss You." Either that, or he's a really good sport.

"Trouble in Shangri-La" is Nicks' best work since her 1981 solo debut, "Bella Donna." The record is full of purpose and spark, and Nicks has found a symbiotic producer in Crow, who gives her tracks an elegantly crisp, country-folk/Beatles-pop sound -- she's like Buckingham, without the baggage. Although Nicks didn't write all of it, "Trouble in Shangri-La" is pure Stevie, with songs called "Sorcerer" and "Candlebright" and lots of womanly wisdom about not regretting the past and embracing age and being true to your dreams. Nicks is a middle-aged girl getting her second wind. She has never apologized for being Stevie Nicks, for doing those interpretive dances, for wearing those boots, for never learning to read or write music.

She has outlasted the bad reviews ("A menace solo, equally unhealthy as role model and sex object," wrote Robert Christgau in the '80s edition of "Christgau's Record Guide"). She has outlasted the cocaine addiction, and the addiction to the tranquilizer Klonopin, prescribed by a doctor to help her kick the cocaine addiction. She has outlasted the Epstein-Barr syndrome (caused by degenerating breast implants, she believes) that left her exhausted, bloated and creatively blocked. She has outlasted the depression and the self-doubt: "Will you write this for me/He said, No, you write your songs yourself," she sings on the new "That Made Me Stronger," about a pep talk she got from her old pal Tom Petty. But Stevie Nicks won't outlast "Rhiannon," "Landslide," "Dreams" and "Silver Springs." Those songs -- those melodies, that foggy, headstrong voice -- play on and on, woven into pop music's genetic code. You'll never get away from the sound of the woman who wrote them.

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